New York City Ballet dancer Merrill Ashley was returning from a seasonal layoff in 1977, feeling out of shape and nursing a scraped foot, when ballet master George Balanchine hailed her on her way to class.

Saturday night at Miami City Ballet, there were plenty of dancers stalking and spinning around the stage of the troupe’s studio theater. But the dancer who was the star of the show hardly moved at all. She didn’t have to. Chita Rivera, the Broadway legend who played Anita in the original production of West Side Story, charmed the adoring audience with sass, stories and pungent opinions on TV talent shows.

Miami City Ballet principal Jennifer Carlynn Kronenberg had a clear vision of how things would go when she and her husband, fellow MCB principal Carlos Miguel Guerra, decided to have a baby. Then she passed her due date by two weeks and had an unplanned cesarean section. ‘I had to take off longer than expected and couldn’t do any physical activity other than walking for eight weeks,’ says the mom of Eva, now 1. ‘I was devastated. I had this whole plan in mind and it got shot down.’

Broward audiences got their first glimpse this weekend into Artistic Director Lourdes Lopez’s vision for the Miami City Ballet, and it was stunning.Although Lopez returned to Miami last year, she triumphed with an inaugural season conceived by her predecessor, MCB founder Edward Villella. Program I: First Ventures, which debuted two weeks ago in Miami and repeats at West Palm Beach’s Kravis Center Nov. 15-17, is the first programmed by Lopez.

Anyone who had doubts about the direction of Miami City Ballet can put them aside after this opening program. Two of the standards looked as fresh as ever and a work new to the company was performed with the confidence of a staple of the repertory.

Miami City Ballet added a striking new facet to its profile with the startling, off-kilter architecture of Christopher Wheeldon’s Polyphonia on its season-opening program. But it was Serenade, the nearly 80-year-old Balanchine work that has been a company mainstay, that got the strongest applause Friday night at the Adrienne Arsht Center’s Ziff Ballet Opera House.